Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition

In 1682, three women in Bideford, Devon, were accused of witchcraft and executed. Despite this, the belief in witchcraft lingered for over a century. In our own age, their example has been transformed from canker to regret and from regret to celebration, with their names being chanted by women at Greenham Common during the final Parliamentary debates to repeal the witchcraft acts. John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate in his book "The Bideford Witches".

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 07 October 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping, and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As a result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbors endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though 'pretty much worn away the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common.

In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.

Weight: 690g
Dimension: 165 x 241 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781788314398